I'm Having a Willy Wonka Moment: Reverse That.
Preface This: The purpose of this Happy Rule is to bring personal awareness.
Momma would ask us to give her fifteen minutes to come down from her school day. After time was up, she wanted to know how our day went. I can remember talking to my mom, on occasion, about some teacher's negative behavior during my school day. I had the blessing of her comforting wisdom from an educators stand point. It's likely you did that, too. My mother was never the teacher, who thought no teacher was ever wrong. She understood my questions.Sadly, I have witnessed the same puzzling behavior from a few educators in these last decade of volunteering in my children's schools and working as an instructional aide. Worse still, my own children had three educators that stand out to them today as being the "evil ones". See if this sounds familiar to you.
Teacher makes comments to student(s) in front of the class like: "Your parents are....!", "What kind of parents do you all have!?", "What is YOUR problem!?", "If your parents would....!", "I don't know why I do this job!", "You big baby!", etc. Picture other hateful, humiliating, and disrespectful comments being spoken loudly to a child or at times screamed at an entire class, including the many innocent children. The "innocent" children being the ones that sit everyday fearfully squirming in their seats. They pray every moment of every school day they will not be the ones to have to wrath pour down on their heads.
Now step back. Reverse that. Put your child, grandchild, or self in the receivers position. OUCHHH! You've seen it, too! Does it make you want to say the following to that so called educator?
"Stop! Would you like your child to be subjected to that verbal and emotional abuse? I wish you could see yourself. We all get heated at times. We have kiddos that appear to have a mission to push us to the brinks of insanity, but what we say can often not be undone. They are the children! We are the adults! Our tongue can be a two edge sword, which cuts the very confidence out of a child's academic heart forever. I assure you, your peers are about as sick and tired of hearing your ranting, screaming, and hateful comments. You are making our world stressful around here! Stop terrorizing the children in your classroom. Stop it!"
Happy Schools can't have happy vibes when hateful, hurtful comments are shouted and screamed at the children. Educators are suppose to be teaching respect, anti-bullying, and self-esteem. Fellow educators are sick of hearing it....maybe even more sick of it than the children are. Thus, stress and tension begins to rise among the staff. So, lets look inside ourselves. Is there someone you need to pull aside and kindly give an eye opening talk. Or, could it be you needing a wake-up call? In the words of the Great Wonka, "Let's Reverse That".
Find ways to cope with the stress that are effective and not destructive.
Synergize.
Seek to Understand.
Be a part of the healing in our Happy Schools.
